Conflict of Pinterest: How First Choice used content and social sharing to increase blog traffic by 500 per cent

This case study details how First Choice increased social interactions and blog traffic using an interactive HTML5 infographic space, Conflict of Pinterest.

First Choice tasked SEO and content marketing agency Caliber with creating an HTML5 infographic with the following objectives:

Portray First Choice as a digital marketing leader

Generate links on high profile websites, powered by on-site social shares

Generate over 10,000 social interactions

Increase First Choice’s blog traffic by over 50 per cent

Concept Conflict of Pinterest’s core concept was to create an interactive HTML5 infographic space where people could vote for the world’s most beautiful country. Caliber produced a simple visual design on a newsworthy subject that would encourage major media outlets to pick it up. This allowed it to captivate audiences without a major spend. Voting was conducted through two social networks – Twitter and Pinterest – and user generated content was parsed into country- specific feeds on the infographic itself. The former was a practical method of engaging a large audience, while the latter was a way to make the project ground-breaking as it used Pinterest in a new way. Votes were updated in real time to an interactive heat map and users could explore by clicking on a specific country where they would see a thread of votes and pinboards which had been submitted in support of that nation’s bid to be the world’s most beautiful country. These threads drew in readers from all over the globe and sparked good-natured debates pitting the Swiss Alps against the Rockies, and Latvian lakes against Scottish lochs. This conversational element was crucial to the infographic’s success, as it allowed participants to qualify their votes and express their love for particular countries. Voters through both social networks were also entered into competitions for prizes provided by First Choice. Campaign executionThe infographic was created with the editorial preferences of Mashable in mind. This site is the ultimate hosting ground for infographics as its audience is very engaged with social media and thus infographics posted there often go viral.Engaging competitions were used to encourage people to vote via the infographic. Pre-launch conversations with journalists at traditional outlets revealed that the microsite itself was less appealing to general/offline audiences. With this in mind we focused our initial efforts on social outreach rather than traditional publications. The campaign launched on April 13 2012 with an exclusive feature on Mashable. The infographic immediately accumulated thousands of tweets, hundreds of Facebook likes and shares through other social networks. Over that weekend it was Mashable’s most shared item. To complement this initial social boost Caliber used paid social media campaigns on Twitter, StumbleUpon and Facebook to drive interactions. The material resonated with viewers and the momentum built to a viral stage. Organic social media outreach played a major role. Caliber contacted tourist boards and key influencers, encouraging them to galvanise their followers into voting for a given country. Consequently the infographic went viral among online communities in Latvia, Mexico and Turkey as people voted patriotically in large numbers. Results

The infographic was published on over 300 websites, with media coverage achieved in: The Travel Trade Gazette (online and in print), Mashable, The Daily Mail, The Huffington Post and Gadling

Over 72,109 social interactions (7 x KPI)

16,680 likes and shares on Facebook

11,439 tweets of the infographic

3541,497 interactions via StumbleUpon

831 pins on Pinterest

654 shares on LinkedIn

311 shares on Google+

114,002 unique page views

Outreach and viral spread generated 300+ links and five keywords jumped to the front page of Google’s results. During the month of April, traffic to First Choice’s blog jumped 500 per cent

Adriano Comegna, SEO manager, TUI UK, commented: “We chose to undertake this campaign because we think it’s important we innovate within the UK travel industry. It allowed us to not only experiment with new and emerging web technologies such as HTML5/ CSS3, but also place our customers in the driving seat of our campaigns by empowering them to decide on the end result. Marketing is shifting very quickly to more costumer centric and consumer engaging models and we believe content and social sharing is the next real battleground for brands.”

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